Manufacturing methods and processes for a part may involve cutting and forming operations. Manufacturing process such as sheet metal cutting may include tool heads like laser, waterjet, plasma, flame cutting machines, etc., used for two dimensional (2D) cutting of flat sheets and for three dimensional (3D) cutting. Bevel cutting in thick sheets and plates may be achieved either by manually tilting a tool head in 2D machines or by programmatically controlled tool head in a 3D machines. Bevels may also be machined by milling tools and other means.
Metal cutting machines are evolving day by day and are driving demand to improve automation of manufacturing systems and methods to enhance end user productivity with computer aided software tools and computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools. Computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided manufacturing (CAM) tools may provide an effective means to conceive and manufacture parts. Designs may be developed in 3D CAD and the same data may be used in CAM to produce tool paths for manufacturing different types of parts. A 3D model may contain various types of features. Features are local regions in a 3D model, consisting of a set of faces that provide information required for performing a specific task in designing, manufacturing, costing, etc.
3D modeling is performed in feature based design systems by a combination of various design features that add and subtract volumes to obtain the desired final shape. Most of the times, information from these design features are not useful for downstream applications like manufacturing, costing, manufacturability analysis, etc. In such cases, either manual or automatic reinterpretation of 3D model data into application specific features is required. On the other hand, 3D models imported from other CAD systems do not have feature tree and they simply load as imported solids. In such cases, application specific features are to be extracted manually or automatically. Automatic extraction of features from 3D model can largely help in improving productivity during CAM process and other downstream processes.